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Under the agreement with Evotec, J&J will have the chance to select disease mechanisms and drug candidates identified through the collaboration, and move them into pre-clinical and clinical testing. The drug giant will reimburse Evotec for as much as $10 million in research costs over a period of at least three years. Evotec would also stand to gain as much as $125 million to $145 million for each drug development program that meets specified milestones.

Seabrook says J&J would prefer to develop small molecule drugs, but the company doesn’t rule out the development of biologic drugs such as antibodies if they would work best against certain disease targets.

Though it may take decades of work, Seabrook says, the ideal outcome of research in Alzheimer’s disease would be to develop early treatments to head off the disorder, as well as early diagnostic tests to identify the patients who need those drugs.

“It would be fantastic if we could accomplish that,” Seabrook says.

Bernadette Tansey is Xconomy's San Francisco Editor. You can reach her at btansey@xconomy.com. Follow @Tansey_Xconomy